Chapter 7 - The Auction on Elm
The thirty-first of the month arrived with a sky the color of dried lard.
At eight o'clock in the morning, two large yellow moving trucks pulled up to the curb outside 404 Elm Street. They weren't high-end movers with padded blankets and white gloves; they were heavy, diesel-smelling flatbeds hired by the County Sheriff’s Department Civil Enforcement Unit.
A crowd of neighbors had gathered on the sidewalk—Mrs. Higgins from 3A, the super, Mr. Henderson, holding his brass keyring, and three shopkeepers from the bakeries along the block.
Laura stood on the landing of the fourth floor, wearing her grey coat, her arm wrapped around Sophia, who was holding her yellow plastic bucket.
Deputy Sheriff Miller, a thick-set man with a moustache that covered his top lip, stood outside the door of Apartment 404 with an iron crowbar in his right hand and a clipboard in his left.
"Final notice, occupants," Miller shouted, his voice booming through the stairwell. "Writ of Possession execution number Four-Nine-Two-Seven. Door will be unlatched in thirty seconds."
The door opened from the inside before the crowbar touched the wood.
Arthur Vance stood in the hallway. He was wearing his best blue suit—the one he had worn to Laura’s wedding ten years ago—but it hung off his shoulders like a sheet thrown over a wooden frame. His skin was the color of wet newsprint, and his eyes were dull, rimmed with red, watery circles.
Behind him, Eleanor sat on a single wooden dining chair in the middle of an empty room.
The apartment was stripped. The Persian rugs were gone; the oil paintings of the Scottish hills had been taken off the walls, leaving pale, clean rectangles on the yellowing wallpaper. Six large cardboard boxes stood near the window, taped shut with brown paper tape.
"Laura," Arthur said. His voice was barely louder than the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen.
"Hello, Father," Laura said. She didn't move toward him. She stayed four feet away, her feet planted firm on the landing carpet she had paid to clean two years ago.
"Is this... is this what you wanted?" Arthur asked, waving his hand toward the empty room, toward his wife sitting on the wooden chair like a patient in a charity ward. "To see us like this? In front of the neighbors?"
"I didn't choose the date, Father," Laura said. "The court chose it after your lawyer failed to file an answer to the ejectment motion."
Eleanor stood up from the chair. She didn't have her rhinestone glasses on today; her face looked raw, small, and old without them.
She walked slowly to the threshold, her feet dragging on the bare floorboards. She stopped two inches from Laura, her eyes fixed on her daughter’s face.
"You think you've won," Eleanor whispered. Her teeth were brown around the edges, her breath smelling of bitter coffee and old stomach acid. "You think you're going to live here in our home, sitting on our chairs, looking out our window."
"It was never your home, Mom," Laura said. "It was just a place you lived while someone else paid the bills."
"I raised you!" Eleanor spat, a thin bead of saliva appearing at the corner of her lip. "I cooked your meals! I washed your clothes when you were a dirty little girl! I gave you everything!"
"You gave me a bowl of soup," Laura said, her voice perfectly calm, perfectly clear, carrying through the quiet stairwell so that every neighbor on the third-floor landing could hear every word. "And then you threw it in the sink and told my daughter that she was a parasite."
She reached into her bag, pulled out a key ring with three shiny silver keys, and handed them to Deputy Sheriff Miller.
May you like
"Change the locks now, Deputy," Laura said. "The former occupants have twenty minutes to carry their six boxes to the curb, or they will be tagged as abandoned property under Section Eight-Oh-Two."
Arthur didn't yell. He didn't curse. He simply turned, walked into the room, picked up two of the brown cardboard boxes, and carried them down the stairs past his daughter without raising his eyes.
